Sara Joyce is an artist more concerned with the making work than perhaps selling work-and she has done both most of her life. We are, indeed, fortunate to have a retrospective of this caliber at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History.
When I had opportunity to re-connect with my friend, mentor, and fellow painter after almost eighteen years, she said,” Do you paint things that look real?”
I Said, “No.”
She said, “Me neither,” and then we laughed.
Nothing had changed from our previous time together- a span of almost two decades.
Scene from LSCAH exhibit in 2010: Sara Joyce, a Retrospective
I am glad and happy to be able to share what I saw thirty-five years ago and what I continue to appreciate in one of Idaho’s most original and genuine contemporary artists.
Sara Joyce spent much of her life in Pocatello where she raised her three children: Bill, Heidi, and John. In Pocatello Sara began to study art and anthropology, working in mediums such as clay and fiber.
She moved to Genesee, Idaho in the early 1980’s where she maintained a studio at all times. She painted, developed techniques for wrapping fabrics and created form from them. She drew endlessly and read voraciously.
Sitting across from Sara at one of her many tables that filled her studio, I spent many lovely days with her talking about art, philosophy, color, bread, the importance of dark chocolate… the list goes on…
I was fortunate to watch someone dedicated to the arts work every day in a sketchbook and use materials that were discarded by most to make beautiful objects.
When the opportunity arose to actually organize and curate an exhibition of her work, I called on other friends and artists to help with a description of these forty years of work. Ross Coates, the former director of the Museum of Art at WSU, and Marilyn Lysohir, and international ceramicist, both also knew of Sara’s work and were willing to come to the CAH Galleries to look and talk about the pieces in the exhibition.
Words like “naïve,” “folk,” “abstraction,” all came up. We all came to the conclusion that “primitive” or “Naïve” probably were incorrect descriptors for Sara’s work. We all personally knew Sara, and her work was anything but naïve. Her ability to translate her dream imagery into form made the idea of naïve painting seem less than what is really happening in her pieces.
Sara was simplifying form and color. She abstracted her subject matter, and she never really abandoned the figure.
Sara’s process of flattening out the forms and the elimination of detail in her work reminds me of Milton Avery or perhaps the painting of Jacob Lawrence.
Color plays a large role in Sara’s more illustrative paintings and drawings. She often painted her friends and acquaintances, and she used her art to acknowledge what happened in her daily life.
Ross Coates and Marilyn Lysohir both felt Sara’s fabric balls were her best kept secret with regard to her ability to construct and abstract forms in fabric. They see Sara’s Fabric balls as a link to her understanding of the initial value of things tossed away. Sara was reusing and recycling before reusing and recycling were popular- and certainly before they were popular as an art form.
It is also important to realize that Sara’s work is anything but simplistic.
Through the elimination of detail, by reducing shapes and filling in with color, Sara has created what seems to be a sense of purity- a sense of the essential. There are certainly nods to other artists like Mark Rothko and Jacob Lawrence and to the flattened forms used in the WPA large-scale murals. Sara perhaps also pays tribute to Abstract Expressionism in some of her “darker imagery,” although I am not sure that Sara meant the work to be “dark.”
By illuminating the non-essential, by celebrating the everyday, Sara has established a tremendous following and the admiration of her fellow artists throughout the state.
Friends and family are anxious to see her and her many years of creative exploration.
This is really a celebration of one woman’s tremendous dedication to the word “art.
And I am certain the word art in this context was synonymous with “life.”
Thank you,
Ellen Vieth, Exhibition Coordinator
Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History Lewiston, ID: Sara Joyce, a Retrospective, solo exhibit